


A Piece of Ray K's No Good Very Bad Day

by lalejandra



Category: due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-24
Updated: 2005-06-24
Packaged: 2019-07-14 09:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16037231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: brought to you by the letter H, who said I should write a story about Ray having a bad day at work -- but my brain only heard "Ray having a bad day". This is neither a pastiche of nor inspired by poor Alexander.





	A Piece of Ray K's No Good Very Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> brought to you by the letter H, who said I should write a story about Ray having a bad day at work -- but my brain only heard "Ray having a bad day". This is neither a pastiche of nor inspired by poor Alexander.

The day starts with the alarm clock blaring. Ray hits it, and accidentally switches the radio from FM to AM. The equivalent of the rock station he listens to in the morning on AM radio is a right-wing talk show.

Ray hits snooze without realizing this, and when the alarm goes off the second time, instead of waking him up, the drone of annoying people speaking pushes him further into sleep and bizarre dreams about terrorists and haircuts.

When Ray wakes up again, the alarm clock is glowing red: 11:10

He's sweaty, and he feels like an asshole, and he's a little uneasy, but about what he couldn't say. He knows it's residue from the dreams -- and he also knows it's gonna make him feel a little scared and a little grouchy all day.

He rolls out of bed and winces -- he stayed in the same position while he was sleeping, or something. All his muscles hurt.

First he hits the john, where he slips on a dirty towel on the floor, and nearly cracks his head on the sink, and then he realizes he's out of toilet paper, so instead of wiping, he just gets into the shower. It's gross, but it works, and he makes a mental note to buy more toilet paper.

But the shower's out of whack, so he has to take a cold one, and it sucks, and then he realizes he has no clean towels, and the dirty one on the floor actually _smells_ , and without hot water he doesn't want to shave, but the stubble is itchy. He glares at the sink and the floor as he drips and shivers, and then gives up.

He dries himself off with one pair of jeans, and puts on another pair, then takes them off, and puts on boxers, and then takes those off and goes with briefs. A t-shirt. Holster. Socks, shoes. No, boots. No, sneakers. No, boots.

The reflection of his face in the mirror shows someone -- well, way older. With too many lines and deeply set eyes and horrible stubble. Stubble that itches. Used to be when he had itchy stubble, Stella would give him some of her smelly lotion, but he doesn't have a Stella anymore, and he doesn't have any lotion, so he's just going to have to itch.

Ray is out of coffee.

Ray is out of orange juice.

He is thirsty, damn it. Fuck.

Ray has a carton of milk that smells just this side of good -- Fraser probably bought it last week when he was trying to convince Ray to drink smelly tea.

Ray has three hot dogs, two frozen cherry pierogi, and a whole packet of onion and potato pierogi from the deli that are blue and fuzzy on the outside from being in his fridge so long. And a pint-sized container of some stew Fraser made with Bambi that Ray refuses to eat.

He gives up and shrugs into his leather jacket and gets in the GTO, and rests his head on the steering wheel, which accidentally sets the horn blaring, and Ray can't get it to stop. He drives the Goat, blaring horn and all, all the way down to the old neighborhood, where he knows Paulie's guys can be trusted to take care of his baby. He gets some glares on the way, and gets stuck in lunchtime traffic, and feels like a dick in Paulie's borrowing-Volvo driving to the station.

The cell phone has been off all day, he realizes, and that's why he didn't get a call from Welsh asking where he was, and that's why he didn't get a call from Fraser about eating lunch. He's probably got a million messages, all of them nasty. He parks, and flips open the phone.

It's out of batteries. Which he knew, but forgot to plug the charger in the night before.

"Shit." He groans, and hauls himself out of the car and into the precinct -- which is almost empty. No one is there.

He grabs a uniform by the collar. "Where's Welsh?" he demands.

"Uh -- uh --" stutters the uniform.

Ray looks down at his name badge. "O'Leary?" he says. "O'Leary, where the fuck is my lieutenant?"

"You know Ms Vecchio? She -- uh -- she had her babies."

"Frannie? Frannie is having the babies? _Now_?" Ray is stunned. Frannie isn't due for another two or three weeks, at least.

The uniform pulls out of Ray's grip, which is easy, since Ray still can't picture Frannie as a mother. When he finds the guy who did this to her, he's gonna -- do something. Kick his head. Light him on fire.

The uniform straightened his shoulders. "She's at St. Luke's."

Ray wants to bang his head into a wall, but that would be too easy. He uses his desk phone to call the Consulate, but hangs up when Turnbull answers. One of these days he really needs to talk to Welsh about making the Consulate give Fraser an extension so Ray never has to talk to Turnbull again.

He scribbles a note on an old lunch bag he found in his desk drawer: _Gone to hosp. for Frannie. Cell not work. Sry. -RAY K_

Like anyone would think Vecchio'd come back just to go to St. Luke's and watch his sister deliver twins.

Ray considers rushing, but he hasn't had anything to eat, or a cup of coffee. He looks longingly at the coffee machine as he leaves the squad room, but only Frannie could ever coax it into making anything resembling espresso, and he doesn't want to wait, and he doesn't want to -- no, he doesn't have the GTO, he can drink coffee in the piece of shit Volvo.

He leaves through the front door, crosses the street, and buys a coffee from the deli, and a packet of M&Ms.

It's the only thing that's gone right all day. The coffee is perfect. He doubles back and buys another one, circles the block to get to the parking lot, and tries to get into the Volvo.

He left the keys on his desk.

He leaves his coffee on top of the car, and when he gets back with the keys, the coffee isn't hot anymore, only lukewarm, which isn't _awful_ , but it's not what he wanted.

Ray stops for a moment and closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, does not let himself put his fist through the window, and then he starts the car and heads toward St. Luke's.

  



End file.
